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| Beirut saw several sit-ins and protests against the Syrian state measures to quell the uprising there [Reuters] |
After being on the run in his country for more than three months, Omar Edelbi, a Syrian poet and an outspoken critic of President Bashar al-Assad, managed to escape to neighbouring Lebanon - fleeing the Syrian government’s crackdown on dissidents.
Many intellectuals in the region call it the Arab world’s "bastion of freedom"; indeed, Lebanon initially appeared to be Edelbi’s best route out of Syria, given its proximity, its familiarity and the many illegal border crossings available.
But a few weeks after his arrival to Beirut, he started receiving death threats on his phone and via his friends. A couple of months later, he found himself at a branch of the Lebanese military intelligence service, undergoing a four-hour interrogation for "attempting to weaken relations between Syria and Lebanon" and for attempting to "disrupt the Lebanese national fabric".
| "Those who come to Lebanon face the risk of psychological terror, physical terror, arrest and disappearance..." - Moeen Merebi, Member of Parliament |
"The investigation led nowhere because they could not charge me with anything," said 41-year-old Edelbi, the spokesman of the Syrian Co-ordination Committees activist network. "But I believe the reason I was called for investigation is because they wanted me to stop what I was doing."
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